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AMD Radeon R9 285

AMD Radeon R9 285 in 2025: Review and Relevance of an Outdated Fighter

Updated: April 2025

Despite being released back in 2014, the AMD Radeon R9 285 can still be found in budget builds and on the second-hand market. But how relevant is it in 2025? Let's delve into the details.

Architecture and Key Features

Tonga Pro: A Basis for Experimentation

The Radeon R9 285 is based on Tonga Pro architecture, created using a 28nm manufacturing process. This was a transitional phase between the GCN 1.0 and GCN 2.0 series. The card has an improved block structure:

- 32 compute units (2048 stream processors);

- Support for the Mantle API (the predecessor to Vulkan and DirectX 12);

- TrueAudio technology for real-time sound processing.

Important: The R9 285 does not support modern features such as ray tracing (RTX) or FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR). Its closest analogue from AMD technologies of that era is Frame Rate Target Control (FRTC), which allows limiting FPS to reduce power consumption.

Memory: Potential and Limitations

GDDR5 and Bottleneck

The card is equipped with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 176 GB/s. For 2025, this is clearly insufficient:

- Modern games at ultra settings in 1080p require 6-8 GB of video memory;

- Even basic titles like Fortnite or Apex Legends can "consume" 3-4 GB.

However, for older games (2010-2018) and undemanding tasks, the memory is adequate. For example, in CS:GO or Dota 2 at medium settings, the R9 285 shows stable performance.

Gaming Performance

1080p — The Ceiling for Comfortable Play

In 2025, the R9 285 is only suitable for 1080p at low or medium settings. Examples of FPS (tests conducted in April 2025 using Adrenalin 24.4.1 drivers):

- Cyberpunk 2077: 18-25 FPS (Low, 1080p);

- Elden Ring: 22-30 FPS (Low, 1080p);

- Valorant: 90-120 FPS (Medium, 1080p);

- The Witcher 3: 35-45 FPS (Medium, 1080p).

Ray tracing is unavailable due to lack of hardware support. The card is unsuitable for 1440p and 4K gaming, as insufficient memory and low computational power lead to a slideshow effect.

Professional Tasks

Only for Basic Projects

The R9 285 supports OpenCL and Vulkan, which theoretically allows it to be used for rendering or editing. But in practice:

- In Blender, rendering a scene of moderate complexity will take 3-4 times longer than on a modern Radeon RX 7600;

- For DaVinci Resolve, 2 GB of memory is critically low even for Full HD editing;

- In MATLAB or scientific calculations, the card falls behind even integrated solutions like Ryzen 8000G.

Recommendation: Consider the R9 285 only for learning the basics of 3D modeling or photo editing in Photoshop.

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

Energy-Hungry Veteran

The card has a TDP of 190 Watts, which is considered high for 2025. Recommendations:

- Power Supply: At least 500 Watts with an 80+ Bronze certification;

- Cooling: Mandatory 2-3 case fans for intake;

- Case: Mid-Tower with good ventilation. Avoid compact solutions!

The standard cooling solutions for the card (turbo fan or open heatsink) often generate noise under load. If you plan to use it extensively, replace the thermal paste and install additional cooling.

Comparison with Competitors

Battle of Generations

In its class (budget GPUs from 2014-2016), the R9 285 competed with the NVIDIA GTX 960 2GB. In 2025, both cards are outdated, but the comparison is still interesting:

- R9 285: Higher performance in Vulkan projects (e.g., Doom Eternal), but with greater power consumption;

- GTX 960: Quieter, cooler, better driver support for older DirectX 11 games.

Among modern alternatives, the closest is the AMD Radeon RX 6400 (≈$150) — which consumes 53 Watts, has 4 GB of GDDR6, and supports FSR 3.0.

Practical Advice

Who Should Consider the R9 285 in 2025?

1. Budget Gamers: If you need to upgrade an old PC for games up to 2018.

2. Retro Hardware Enthusiasts: For building a PC in the style of the 2010s.

Considerations:

- Power Supply: 500 Watts + 8-pin PCIe cable;

- Compatibility: Requires a motherboard with UEFI BIOS for operation with modern processors;

- Drivers: Official AMD support ended in 2021, but the community releases unofficial patches.

Pros and Cons

Advantages:

- Low price on the second-hand market (≈$30-50);

- Support for HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.2;

- Sufficient performance for indie games and older AAA titles.

Disadvantages:

- Only 2 GB of video memory;

- High power consumption;

- Lack of support for modern technologies (FSR, Ray Tracing).

Final Conclusion

The AMD Radeon R9 285 in 2025 is a choice for those who:

- Are building a PC from used components with a budget of up to $100;

- Want to play games from the 2010s at medium settings;

- Are looking for a temporary solution before purchasing a modern graphics card.

Alternative: If your budget allows for $150-200, consider the new Radeon RX 6500 XT or Intel Arc A380. They support current technologies and consume less power.

The R9 285 is already a part of history, but even today it can provide nostalgic hours in Skyrim or GTA V. Just don’t expect miracles from it.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

September 2014

Model Name

Radeon R9 285

Generation

Volcanic Islands

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

5,000 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

112

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

28 nm

Architecture

GCN 3.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

2GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

256bit

Memory Clock

1375MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

176.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

29.38 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

102.8 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

3.290 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

205.6 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

3.356 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

1792

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

512KB

TDP

190W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.2.170

OpenCL Version

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_0)

Power Connectors

2x 6-pin

Shader Model

6.5

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

450W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

3.356 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon RX 6400

3.636 +8.3%

FirePro S10000

3.473 +3.5%

Radeon R9 285

3.356

FirePro W8000

3.291 -1.9%

GeForce GTX 690

3.193 -4.9%